Dasher
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day four hundred and twenty-one:  reindeer 1/8  Rachel's always considered the course to her dream as "Rachel vs the others."


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 20th cycle. Now cycle 21! (I realized I didn't fix this line throughout the whole of cycle 20! *smacks forehead*)_

_So as I did it **last year (days 52 through 63)**, I wanted to do something Christmas-y, but not overly so. Last year I used the song of "**The Twelve Days of Christmas**", and this year I used... **Santa's Reindeers**! So the stories in and of themselves aren't Christmas-themed, just the title that inspired them is ;) You'll see :)_

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**"Dasher"  
Rachel **

She had grown to pursue victory… She was competitive, almost to a fault. But it felt… like a rush, like she was running… and no one was going to cross that tape before she did, because when she did – and she knew she'd won – she'd feel so good, with a flush to her cheeks… and she always wanted some more.

The thing about the race was that there was always, always her side… and everyone else on the other side. In Glee Club, the day-to-day, it was her versus the other eleven, and the trophy on the other side of that tape was a solo… It was always a solo.

She'd spent so much time in nowhere land, never getting anywhere… She had to contend with a Glee Club ruled over by a sad excuse of a director, who'd chased off most people, making their 'club' unable to even compete outside of McKinley High. But now finally she had a real chance to thrive, to show people what she was made of… What did they expect her to do, just sit there like nothing had changed? In her mind she knew exactly how things were supposed to be, and that involved her taking the lead.

This was the way it went: her side, other side. It was in Glee Club, and in competitions, too… but with one obvious shift: 'her side' was the whole of New Directions with her, and the other choirs on the other side. It was a whole other game there… and it showed.

She was a different person then. She would look out for herself when it was just her and the rest of Glee Club. It was her talent that would get her to where she had always wanted to be, known where she belonged. She had spent enough time wasting away in Ryerson hell; now she had ground to make up. She couldn't let anything get in the way, not anymore… Maybe they couldn't understand that, because they weren't in her place, with her dream and her talent. But if she was going to make it then she couldn't concern herself with it… not too much.

So when it came to competition, to Sectionals, and Regionals, and… if she had anything to say about it, Nationals too… looking out for herself also meant looking out for those other eleven, to make sure that, together, they all crossed that finish line at the same time. Of course, deep down, looking out to make sure they made it through inevitably lined up with looking out to make sure she made it through, but one couldn't be without the other. It was all twelve of them or none at all… She should know; she'd been stuck with 'none at all' before Mr. Schuester had taken over from Mr. Ryerson. It wasn't easy for her, to have to delegate on her victory, but it was necessary, if she wanted there to be victory. She'd still seek out some form of isolation, of spotlight; that went without saying. But she still got that she'd have to share some of this spotlight. She was working, doing her very best to be okay with that.

Because she understood… She knew who she was, and she made little to no apology for it. She'd never hidden who she was; she'd made it clear from the very start. They couldn't really act surprised then… They knew what to expect. If they still had a problem with it, then that was up to them. She had a race to run.

Still there were times where she thought of the days where she could finally hang up her racing shoes and just stop running. There had to be a point where she would reach the end and she could stay there. That would be the time where her dream stopped being a dream and became reality, where all her hard work, her determination, and her loneliness would pay off.

That was the point; it was always the point. A person could only run so far before wondering if they were just running in circles, chasing an end zone that simply did not exist. She had to get there, she'd fought for it so much.

No one saw it like she did, no one understood why she was the way she was… She didn't expect them to. So maybe she stepped on some toes along the way. If they had a dream that burned as bright as hers did, they'd just shake off those toes and carry on.

The fear of not succeeding, of having fought for nothing, that was one of the scariest things she knew. So she kept at it, and she continued to draw the lines where she needed them: her versus the others.

That was the way it had always been. For so long, with the exception of her fathers, all she'd heard was 'no,' and this was if the people even bothered to acknowledge her existence, let alone her talent.

So she ran and ran, with trails of golden stars at her heels, hoping someday to see that last finish line, the one that would make sense of all he life so far.

THE END

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**A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
****always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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